L4D Learning for Democracy

"At the request of the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation, DTU Management Engineering reviewed a number of science and technology foresight studies and subsequently compared them with the GTS2015 catalogue. The result of this work is intended as input for an international assessment of the Danish GTS system (a group of independent Danish research and technology organisations). This report is a separate study undertaken to support and inspire the work of the international expert panel in its evaluation of the GTS system in Denmark. The review was performed by scanning selected studies in the open literature. The studies reviewed were four international studies, three national-level studies and ten Danish-specific technology foresight projects, all conducted between 2002 and 2008. Each foresight study is presented here as a short summary. The studies were selected to cover international as well as national aspects and trends; their observations span technological fields and development trends. The technological fields identified in the studies are structured in this report in thematic classes related to ‘technology and industrial push’ and ‘social demand pull’; the trends identified are structured using the STEEPV approach (social, technology, economics, ecology, politics and values). In this report, we compare the foresight studies reviewed with GTS2015 from three different starting points: (i) the GTS2015 focus areas are taken one by one and briefly compared with the review results; (ii) the GTS2015 technological focus areas are compared at a general level with the technological fields identified in the studies review; and (iii) the GTS2015 trends are compared at a general level with the trends identified in the studies review. The overall picture is one of good compliance between the issues selected for treatment in GTS2015 and the issues identified in the studies review. Especially technological fields and development trends with a high degree of attention and alertness in both national and international communities have a high degree of focus and representation in nearly all the reviewed foresight studies as well as in GTS2015. The highly mentioned technological fields are ecology, energy, health and ICT, and the highly mentioned trends are ecology, ageing society, innovation and knowledge society. In addition, the foresight studies reviewed give more attention to trends related to culture, values and the experience economy than GTS2015. The two experts interviewed for this report expressed the viewpoint that factors and aspects related to the understanding of culture and values should receive much more attention and awareness than they do today."